One Day More
by Lawr
Summary: Javert's suicide failed, but not because he didn't try. He's not allowed to die until he figures out why he was alive. Last chapter posted! Look down, look down, upon your fellow fanfictioner! *jangles cup*
1. Gavroche

**One Day More**

_**Gavroche**_

_He was somewhere warm. Somewhere soft, finally. He was finally allowed one day to rest, one moment, at last. _

Could it be…? Javert thought, not bothering to open his eyes but just breathing in the sweet, cool air, feeling the bathwater breeze on his skin. Had he done what was right? Had letting Jean Valjean go really been enough to pave his way into having a soul, into having morals instead of laws, into entering into the blank expanse of eternal rest that lay before him, was he finally in----

Flecks of gritty stones washed over his face, stinging the sides of it where it was bruised and scraped. Tentatively, he reached one hand up to his cheek, where half his cheek was tattered away. He pressed at his face carefully for a moment more before opening his eyes in alarm and feeling more rapidly for his coat pocket.

"Aw, _hell_," he moaned, rooting through his empty, Seine-beaten-and-drenched greatcoat, which was looking shabby and a little worse for wear. It had come out torn and muddied, almost wearable but just worn enough to make him look ridiculous. It was, ironically, the state Javert himself was in. Oh, irony. His only friend.

Peeling himself off the ground and unsticking his legs from where they were sucked into the greasy river mud, he stood, carefully, painfully, at the bottom of the bridge, sloshing around unceremoniously until he reached dry land. Something shining caught his eye on the bank ahead of him---he squinted---ah! _Francs_? Some luck at last! If he wasn't dead, he would at least need to eat until he could find a way to die properly. He sloshed clumsily through the water until he reached his coin purse, finding with uncharacteristic and probably shocked hilarity that it seemed he had more money than when he died. By the time he picked it up, he realized it was because it _wasn't_ his---it was a woman's, a beaded black thing. It would look pretty with his outfit. He stooped to pick it up, hesitated for only a second. Ah well, he thought. Karma is what karma does.

_WHAM!_ He hadn't heard the stealthy footsteps until it was too late and there was a very painful, and very sharp, boot in the small of his back. He crumpled; fell back into the water. Before his muddled eyes, the coin purse was snatched up and into a pair of grubby hands, where it proceeded to be inspected as if the few francs among sous were crown jewels.

"So we meet again, Inspector Javert!" The voice was young, had a blatantly Cockney accent, and sounded immensely pleased with itself. Javert struggled to sit up, but another weight sat promptly on top of him. He half-sank into mud, thinking irritably that his clothing had lasted all of twenty years as being pristine and neat, and now in one day, they would be ruined. Twisting his neck at a very awkward angle, he looked up and met a pair of large blue eyes in a freckled face, very near to his own. Smears of soot ran along either side of the boy's cheeks. He smiled, giving Javert a gap-toothed grin.

"…Gavroche? But how…?" he said faintly, struggling pathetically under the bit of weight on his back. Dying really takes a lot out of you, he thought dryly. The person sitting on top of him couldn't weigh more than ninety pounds soaking wet, which he was. Eventually he just stopped trying and gave up limply, like a fish that didn't know how to breathe.

Gavroche squatted down by Javert's face, all friendly-like, and tugged his greatcoat from under him. Javert made a move to grab it, but his hands were too slow. He felt like he, for lack of a better comparison, had just jumped off a bridge and been slogging through mud and was being sat on and robbed by a couple kids. Namely, he felt like crap. So he just watched as Gavroche went through his (previously empty) coat, and listened to him talk. '

"You know, you ne'er treated me and my friends no good, Inspector," Gavroche said conversationally, pulling what looked like a locket and some wadded up papers out of the coat, which set Javert's head reeling. Where did those _come_ from? he thought exasperatedly. He never kept anything in his pockets, just in case something like this happened. "We was always having to run away from you and your silly dandified friends, too, was we. And all we ever did was take a few apples, or a bite of bread, as some of us 'twould have it." He winked, making to open the locket but stopping when Javert flailed for it, coming a good foot short.

"What?" Gavroche said innocently, waving the locket gently in front of Javert's face. "You want to _arrest_ me? You want to _take back what's yours_? Don't you know some people have probably felt the same way and had no other way to get it, they were so desperate, that they just needed a little bite of something or a couple sous to move forward?" Javert lunged for the locket, and missed. Gavroche polished it on his grubby shirt, making the tarnished surface worse.

"Dun worry, Inspector, _I_ don't have it," Gavroche said matter-of-factly, "Thénardier does. _I'm_ just a figment of your imagination. After all, I'm dead, ain't I? But you're not," he said, and giggled, not with his usual wholehearted childishness but with a darker hue to his throat. "You're a bit feverish, aren't you? Better watch out for the _real_ sewer rats, Inspector."

Javert, whose mind had been sinking into a saltwater lull, snapped back to attention. His mind focused in on the locket, which no one had ever seen before and, if Gavroche truly wasn't real, no one ever would. Using all the strength left in him, Javert threw whoever was sitting on his back into the water, causing a girlish surprised squeal from the dirty-faced girl he faintly recognized as the girl who had died on the barricades the day Valjean had let him go. Some bourgeoisie name, he remembered. Eponine. But just standing, and remembering that, was too much for him, and he sank back into a dizzying black-edged stupor where he could still hear Gavroche's words.

"Someone up there's got their eye on you, Inspector Javert, and they can't punch in your time card just yet. So you just be careful, now, and don't be gettin' into no trouble, 'cause who saves the prisoner of his own mind?"

Javert had no answer to that question. He was blissfully gone, but not as gone as he had hoped.


	2. Thenardier

_**Thenardier**_

_Can you hear the people sing? Singing the….singing the…_

"Songs of angry men?" A voice said, amused. "No. Because I'm not crazy." The deadpan in the man's voice gave way to a bitter laugh edged with hysteria, and Javert opened his eyes. His mouth was dry and he was making noises, and he realized he'd been talking out loud. How embarrassing. Then again, he mused, as a face came into focus and hands roughly patted him down, it was hard to get any more embarrassing than having just failed at your own death, being soaked in mud and grime, and being felt up by a man who could use a good wash and a few more buttons at his neck. Javert tried to get up, but, as was the pattern lately, he was stopped.

"Not so fast, Javert…I'm sure you've got other pretty trinkets on you, somewhere, they just have to be found," Thenardier said in a sing-song voice, patting Javert's face with long, sooty fingers. In his other hand, he was deftly flicking the locket along his knuckles, as some do with a coin. Another robbery? he thought. Thenardier could at least switch it up. As if he had overheard, Thenardier's fist came slamming into Javert's stomach, leaving the man crumpled up in pain and defenseless. Never mind, karma, Javert thought. Order and light? Of course not. In fact, the blackly-lit purple spots flickering across his vision seemed to mock him. As he was recovering from the fist and breathing in spasms of air, Thenardier opened the locket, amused.

"What could little Javvy possibly keep 'round his neck, then, I wonder? Oh, how unusual…it's a wee little _painting_! Of his _mommy_, no less. Look at that, Javert…you look just like her, down to the Gypsy skin. That must be where you get your…_pretty_…_hair_…"With each word Thenardier grabbed Javert's long ponytail and slammed his head against the wall. Fighting to get the smaller, scrawnier man off him, Javert wrestled Thenardier against the wall, where he stopped struggling abruptly, grinning against the stones.

"Ooh, the cop's got me now, haven't you, Javvy? Whatcha going to do now? _Hit_ me?" Thenardier grinned maniacally, jabbing an elbow into Javert's ribs and knocking the breath out of him. Smartly, Thenardier turned around and smashed his cane against the back of Javert's knees, sending him sprawling. When he determinedly got to his knees, Thenardier sent one fist into the back of his neck, and followed with barely a space to breathe with a kick to his spine. Javert was hurled against the wall, breathing shallowly and trying, for once, to be small, as Thenardier repeatedly sent kicks to his ribs. Thenardier was no young soldier, but he had been toughened out by living the life that he had, and he was miserly in allowing both money and breath. When it seemed that Thenardier had stopped, Javert sucked in air greedily, spitting blood at Thenardier's feet and feeling very much like a woebegone, defiant prisoner.

"That's right, Inspector, breathe. But not too much, or you might crack a rib. How do you think I know what it feels like, hunh? It wasn't like _I_ was a prisoner or anything." Thenardier moved around the dingy room, sloshing mud at his captive and gesturing grandly at the ceiling. He was wearing a black cap, a tattered waistcoat that might once have been green, and many, many necklaces and rings. As if he'd noticed Javert was breathing regularly, albeit shallowly, again, Thenardier took Javert's collar in his hands and slammed his head against the wall one final time, as if for good measure. Thenardier's breathing was quick and shallow, too, sour and rank against Javert's throat.

"How many times, ya think, did you do that exact same thing to some poor kid just trying to make a living? _How many times_?"Javert was struck by the size of Thenardier's teeth, and how sharp they were, like a foxes'. There were three missing and the front two were badly chipped.

"I never touched a soul in my prison," Javert said coldly, regaining some of his old pride. Though, now he was laying, muddy and exhausted as before, robbed and riches-less as before, but to add to his former embarrassment he was now bloody and weakened from a man whose cell he'd probably could get the keys to, and watching him take blows at his self-esteem. If Valjean were to come dancing in in a tutu and tell him he'd baked him a cherry-tart, Javert would be less surprised. "I made sure their lives were as fair as they deserved."

"Or you just didn't want to bloody your pretty hands, did you, Inspector?" The man was full-on leering now, and it was not a nice sight. Scraggles of blackened, greasy hair were escaping from under his cap, and it added to the slightly maddened look in his light eyes. He spit at Javert's feet contemptuously, before hoisting Javert none too gently from under his arms and over his shoulders.

"What are you doing? Where are we going?" Javert demanded, feeling slightly embarrassed that he used such a tone of command when he could barely support his own weight. Thenardier knew this and snorted.

"Back to the inn, you excuse of a cop. There'r tables to be cleaned and floors to be scrubbed."Thenardier grunted. "And maybe, if you're good, a brandy to be had."


	3. Grantaire

_**Grantaire**_

Javert had carefully considered all alternatives and solutions; he had walked through his past steps and had come up with three conclusions. One, he must be dying or hallucinating (he had proven that with Gavroche) so anything he did in this nonsensical other-life would not affect his life's records. Two, there was only one way to solve the problem of leaving his hallucinations, and that would be his original intention of drowning himself. Three, there was no Seine around (Thenardier had not let him leave the inn) so he bloody may well just drown himself in wine.

As the inn darkened and the rowdy crowds were thrown out by the Thenardiers, Javert slumped alone at a table, feeling strangely sluggish and confused. He'd interrogated Thenardier to no end about why he'd been beaten up in the sewers and dragged back to the inn to clean the floors and tables, but the best he'd gotten out of the man was an agitated 'God rewards all the stupid questions you leave unasked, you insolent Inspector.' In the present circumstances, Javert found the answer adequate.

He let out an uncharacteristically high and therefore frightful laugh, more like a wheeze of air expelled from his lungs. He put his top hat on the table and leaned face-first into it, every so often letting out a little giggle. To think in that moment before he'd jumped, he'd wanted nothing more than to live again, to not abandon his chase…even to reform some of himself that he'd been doubting. How ironic that in this strange day he'd been granted, he was spending it alone at an inn, too broke to even pay for a way out.

"Hey, you," a voice called from across the silent bar. It came from a corner table, one that had recently looked it was only inhabited by shadows .Javert leaned forward, just out of dull curiosity. It was a young man, one of the revolutionaries, Javert thought in disgust, judging by the poppy-red band around his hat slumped low over his eyes. The boy cocked a finger lazily, and put a dull green bottle to his lips. There were more where that one came from, Javert observed.

"Drink with me." The kid spoke with his lips still against the bottle, lingering there wistfully as if against a lover's lips. Javert stared him down stoically, light grey eyes boring imaginary holes of cynicism through his skull. Him, Inspector Javert, drink with some young revolutionary poppet not old enough to even carry a gun? Him, sink so low as to befriend his enemy, to become one of them, scrounging on the floor of a lowlife inn? The nerve, the impertinence, the—

"I know you can't pay for your own," the young man drawled, kicking out a chair with a ridiculously feminine fancy boot. Javert looked down, shamefaced even in his pride. The truth. He never asked for money, never shared with anyone, never made friends for fear of debts and bargains. But then again, he reasoned, it was only a dream come from dying, and he had no reputation to lose anymore.

He sat, straight backed and proper, in the chair offered, smoothing the wrinkled out of his coat with great care and straightening a button under his neck. The kid watched this, amused, and held out a bottle.

"Name's Grantaire. Should be fighting, but, you know, I thought getting myself absolutely splendidly drunk would serve my country better in the end."

Javert took the bottle first, then the hand offered, and put the bottle to his lips with dogged determination. It didn't take him long to finish. The kid---Grantaire---looked on in fervid admiration.

Tipping the bottle back to get the last drops, Javert wiped his mouth with the corner of a frilly sleeve, then sighed. Already his head was starting to buzz. He picked up another bottle (Grantaire had enough for twenty armies) and put it to his lips, enjoying the slight burn of strong whiskey. When he had finished that one, too, with Grantaire looking on with slight eyebrows raised, Javert gasped and slammed the bottle down with finality.

"Inspector Javert," he said slurrily, offering a hand, forgetting they'd already shaken hands. Grimly, he set out for another bottle, but Grantaire held him back, scrubbing a hand against the stubble on his face and looking the Inspector in the eye.

"I thought as much…somehow, I thought you were dead." He eyed the bottles lining up quickly, and muttered dryly, "Somehow." Grantaire picked up a new bottle, tossing it in his hand and eyeing it with little interest. "Somehow again, I didn't imagine you as much of a drinker."

"I take it you require an explanation of my actions?" Javert spoke flatly, the alcohol making him quickly stingy and high-tempered. He'd never drank a day in his life, which is why he found this way of killing himself so effective, if a little inconvenient and aromatic. Javert went for a fourth bottle, but his hands didn't quite want to reach that way anymore. "I failed to kill myself, and drinking didn't sound like a bad way to do so," he said matter-of-factly. Grantaire looked up, but Javert couldn't tell if he was approving or discontented.

"That's what I'm thinking too." Grantaire sighed, looking over Javert's shoulder distantly. "I should never have left him, you know? But I didn't want to just watch him die."

_I should never have left him. _Javert was thinking, muzzily, the exact same thing. If he hadn't tried to jump off the edge of the bridge on the Seine, if he'd only waited that extra time for Valjean, the man could be in prison and he'd have no more troubled soul. Wouldn't he? He'd put a convict back in prison, where he belonged. But the man was a damned saint---he couldn't walk a step without saving some poor street kid. What kind of logic is that? Javert's troubled mind, loosened by the drink, explored paths his typically rational and intolerant mind usually surpressed.

"Perhaps he's an angel after all," Javert murmured out loud, before he realized he'd said it.

Grantaire nodded, lost in his own world of dark reds and browns and flashes of white skies and the acidic taste of gunpowder.

"I like to think that he is," he whispered, a drop of something---liquor, or blood, or a tear---trailing the contours of his face. His eyes were distant and misted over, reflecting a face Javert did not know or care about in the slightest. They stared into their own reveries, as the minutes turned to hours and the hours into seeming years.

Javert was starting to get dizzy, so when he and Grantaire had been turned to their separate thoughts for long enough for it to fall completely black-blue outside, the door bursting open was amplified to the sounds Grantaire must have been hearing on his imaginary warfield. Rain spattered against the exposed inn floor, and a shadow moved into the inn. By the faint yellow light of the candles at the inn tables, Javert could see the figure's features. He laughed appreciatively. All this madness with angels and demons had brought his hallucinations quite the appropriate face.

"Javert," Jean Valjean said, a look of pity or maybe disgust poorly hidden in his eyes. Javert scooted the chair out, slamming his palms against the table a bit harder than necessary, and looked on Valjean with crazed eyes. His breathing hitched---he was exhausted, but it was, again, necessary to escape. Why was he now always on the run? Was this what he was leading up to with his failure to die, must he imagine Valjean's own plight by running and never having a safe haven?

So be it. Javert shouldered past the man, the small wooden doorframe screaming in protest as he shoved the stronger man against the wall. Ignoring the man's pleas and scared of the hand that fleetingly found his shoulder, Javert laughed hysterically, facing the white noise of the rain.

"Is this what you wanted, Lord?" he screamed to the heavens, tripping on the wet cobblestones and bracing himself up on one arm and knee. "Our roles are reversed now. I feel his pain, I feel his loneliness…I do not understand this plague you have affected me with, but I can only…I can only assume…that it is the sickness of a…frightened…frightened…" He trailed off feebly. A shadow loomed over him on the inn porch, and Javert scrabbled away, trying to get to his feet but not finding the coordination.

"Javert." The voice was urgent and calming, not without kindness. "Javert, you're drunk." The man reached out for him, but Javert was back on his feet, eyes uncannily light and wide and catching every hint of the moon's reflection. The drink seemed to have sharpened his wits and reflexes, besides the occasional trip or slur---yes, yes, he must run away now. That was the order of things, wasn't it? He hoped that the drink masked the fear in his eyes. The fear that redemption would come to him now---for years of what he'd realized was him uselessly inflicting pain on Jean Valjean and others like him.

He gave a caustic little bow to Valjean, and started off at a stumble, and then at a lopsided run.

"Javert!" Valjean called after him. "Please, let us talk about this sensibly."

Another bitter, hysterical laugh.

"Do not speak to me of sense, 24601!" was the reply spat faintly on the wind. Valjean frowned and wrapped an extra jacket, a bottle of brandy, some bread, and a hat in the blanket he'd been carrying, and set off after Javert, tipping his hat to the young man who had tried to get Javert to open his heart but had failed.


	4. Valjean

**Authour's note: Well, after looking around the site a bit…it appears people do these things…sooo…here's a note. That's exciting. Anywhoo, if you are reading, please drop a review to replenish my motivational skillage! And, don't be too thrown off by this chapter, I guess. There'll only be one or two after this, which is kind of sad, now that I like this story. **

**And…my AP test on European history is this Friday, but all I can think about is Les Mis. **sigh** Oh well-written historical angst musicals. If only *ALL* European history was like this…**

_**Valjean**_

Javert was running, faster than he'd ever run when chasing a convict, faster than he'd ever thought in any situation that required his wits. With the extra speed added by the drink and the lack of his greatcoat, he felt light and quick on his feet, the rain spattering against his forehead invigorating and infuriating. It was as if the universe mocked him, this turn-of-the-ways. It was as if the universe was spitting the Law back in his face. But, for once, he did not care.

He knew Valjean was chasing him: contemptuously, he barked a one-syllable laugh of scorn. The man was older than he and, though strong, his years of hideaway had sunken him into comfort. But Javert did not doubt the feeling Valjean must have had: the feeling of laying low, like a rat, the feeling that you were being watched in open places and you were trapped in enclosed ones. That was what Javert felt now---the feeling of the moon's unwavering stare, watching Javert run away from his old adversary. The knowledge that he had given up.

Couldn't even kill myself, Javert grumbled to himself. What kind of a man am I.

The rain had loosed his hair from its ponytail, and it was out and scraggling wildly in dark curls around his face, untamed and unsobered such as he was. He slicked it back with the rain, but it was no use. The momentary distraction pulled him from his heady exhilaration, and he realized he was starting to stumble. Catching himself just at the right time, he righted himself on the wide pale stones of a bridge, looking over into the swirling, angry depths of the river below. Breathing hard, he stared at a familiar reflection in the black expanses of a familiar night, and he braced himself better and let out an untamed, frenzied laugh at the irony. It was the bridge over the Seine. Damn that river! Could he go nowhere else? He sought to move again, but it was as if his legs were held in place by beggars and thieves, and his chest was constricted as if bound. Slowly, he sank against one of the bridge's wide walls, clutching his arms around himself as if trying to hold himself together and laughing, panic-stricken and alone.

It didn't take too long for Valjean to find him. He was leaning against a wall in the shadows and giggling a little, hair dampened and in his face. He'd tried pretending to be a rock, but that obviously didn't work. Valjean started slowly towards him, but Javert, with senses quickened by hate, held up a hand.

"Don't try, Valjean," he muttered against the wind, looking up and giving Valjean a look of stoic bitterness. "What are you going to do? Convince me that life is worth living and that the sun and the birds and the rainbows all want me to skip along home now? Follow me into the river and save my life to earn saint-points? Offer me…offer me…" Javert realized he was exhausted, and more than a little incapable of speech. As well, it was freezing cold on the bridge, the wind whipping his hair in his face and around his neck, giving it the feeling of solid frozen knives. "Offer me…" Javert's mouth was too cold to form words. He wiped the frozen blood from around it with a tattered shirtsleeve.

"Offer you what?" came the blank response. "This?" And before Javert could defend himself, Valjean's fist collided brutally with the tender spot where Thenardier had hit him earlier. Javert's face went white, and he rose a shaking hand to his ribs, but he grinned wryly with half his mouth, cracking the blood on his lips.

"That's more like it…" he sighed sardonically. Valjean squatted by him, raising the Inspector's lolling head from its spot on his chest. Then Valjean slapped him.

"Ow!" Javert hissed, flailing out his arm pathetically in an attempt to get Valjean away. "The first one I could have taken like a man, but that was downright low."

"The first one was for the nineteen years," Valjean said amiably, shifting Javert away from the cold, sodden rock wall. Javert stiffened when Valjean moved him, expecting another blow, but Valjean only meant to tug a blanket behind his back. Javert made half an effort to stop the kindness, and his twisting did stop Valjean, who rocked back on his heels, eyebrows raised. "The second one was for you being wholly too self-sacrificing. You've developed a guilty conscience complex, I'm afraid."

"_I've_ developed a guilty conscience?" Javert laughed one incredulous note. "_I'm_ not the one who goes running all over the city with a Good-God-what-have-I-done detector, even if it's not your fault."

"Even so," Valjean murmured, white hair that Javert had caused that day in the courtroom longer, but neatly tamed and slicked back, even in the wind. His eyes were worried and gentle, which made Javert sick. "You've still been through quite a lot."

Javert laughed bitterly, choking it off when Valjean's inquisitive hand reached up to touch the bruise on his face.

"What are you doing? Stop touching me!" he snapped, fending off Valjean's hand. Valjean looked hurt, but went to tend to the fallen blanket. What is it with this man? Javert wondered with half his sane mind, curling up closer to the wall. He would make a good cat lady later in life with all his goddamn tenderness.

"Please don't," he muttered into his crossed arms. He wasn't sure what he was referring to.

"Javert." The voice was stern, but kind. "You're sitting in a puddle of cold water, being thunderstormed on, shivering, in only a shirt and breeches. What kind of a police officer wants to be seen like that?"

A pause.

"Won't look much better with some knitted grandma blanket around my shoulders like I'm expecting or something," Javert's sulky reply came. Even to him, he realized how pathetic he sounded. His shivering was getting so violent it was racking his whole body and interfering with his already problematic speech. Valjean frowned, then went to pick the freezing man up. Javert stiffened again, and struggled to get up.

"No! Absolutely _not_! I can fight my own battles, Monsieur." Valjean listened and left him well enough alone, still watching as Javert tried to pull himself up on the cobblestones. A hint of a smile touched his lips. Javert sighed, giving up, and held out a hand, not meeting Valjean's eyes.

"Please help me up, 24601," he muttered. Valjean complied, managing to drape a blanket over him and put the hat he had left at the inn, trying to restore Javert's failing dignity. It didn't work. Javert's face was as white as milk as he hobbled along, determined not to look at Valjean.

"So is this what I am supposed to be learning?" he muttered darkly, half to himself and half to Valjean. "What it was like to be on the run? What it is like to be humbled? I do not understand…logically I have learned nothing. Valjean…" Javert stumbled and Valjean reached for his blanket-bag, pulling out a cane. Javert looked at it and accepted it without changing his expression. "Magic bag, have we?" was his only sarcastic comment.

They passed that way in silence until Javert reclaimed what he was thinking about. He looked sideways at Valjean, top hat restored and with cane, looking almost, in the darkness, like a shade of his former self.

"Valjean…" he hesitated. "You should know that I will not be arresting you." He laughed, silently. Valjean had already accepted that fact. But the mood in which Javert said it had worried him. "You may have found that out when you came all the way out here just to make sure I didn't freeze my little fingers off."

"Monsieur Javert, you know you are welcome to stay with us," he reminded him gently. Javert turned away, already aware that he was welcome nowhere and his time was running out. But his sides hurt, and his heart ached, and he was tired, so tired.

"Perhaps…for the night," he said grudgingly, reaching the garden gate. He barely remembered as Valjean unlocked it, and he toppled with as much dignity as he could preserve onto the cold stone bench in the garden and heard no more.


	5. Cosette

**Authour's Note: My AP European History test is tomorrow! Please, oh fanfiction gods, grant me a five so that I may go to college. **

**Javert: You're not going to get a five. You won't be able to write the essays. Unless they're magically and conveniently about the life of Victor Hugo and Les Mis, of course. **

**Lawr: Whaaat? No…no!! Not one of these!!! Not the Authour Monologue of Doom with a Conveniently Melodramatic Character who can see into the Authour's Inner Mind…!!!**collapses in a state of exhaustion, muttering** What have I done…what have I done…**

**Javert: **sigh** Oh, clichés. They catch up with everyone. You can't avoid them, not even with long, angsty soliloquies about the hardships of life over a dark and stormy river. **

**Lawr: **twitch** …what…have I… … done? **flail****

**Javert: **Irritable** Is that all you can say? You sound like a Linkin Park song. **

**Lawr: **at this point curled up into fetal ball** VALJEAN…come save me and deal with all my issues while simultaneously adopting me into your family and catching me as I faint prettily…**

**Javert: Hey! You can't steal my role!**

**Cosette: Neither of you can have my poppa, foo's! **white 1800's girl Z snap****

**Lawr: **bowls over** PICK ME I HAVE BREAD**

_**Cosette**_

_Don't you go just yet, Mess'r, _a voice whispered urgently into his ear. It was, strangely, neither male nor female, an androgynous, childlike tone. Was it an angel? Javert's muddled mind allowed the possibility for a moment, before letting it go, letting it disappear into a wisp of smoke never to be reclaimed. Even if he were dying, he'd be far more likely in Hell. _Hold on, Mess'r Javert…don't you fall asleep. Don't you give up, you stupid bourgeoisie-to-a-penny-thing. _

Javert found it strange when he opened his eyes that it was the dawn sky above him, streaks painted in lavenders and weary greys over his head that seemed to lace him, for the moment, into life. He found he was still lying on the cold stone bench: weary and stiff, but someone had laid his head in their lap and was sweeping their hand down his hair in long, mild strokes, a calm, comforting pattern that almost lulled him back to sleep. But his back and sides were soaked through with pain and exhausted, and his head was weary. He pulled his knees closer to him, trying to fit his whole body on the bench and failing. Eventually he gave up, drained of energy and will, and closed his eyes.

"Monsieur," an amused, quiet voice spoke above him. Javert opened his eyes again. The hand was placed to his cheek, and then to his forehead, with concern: it was a small hand, delicate, with elegant nails; a girl who'd never worked a day in her life. It was soft and cool against Javert's weather-beaten skin; he had never felt the like. It was akin to a brush with silk at a market, it was the bathwater breeze of the spring that Javert had not often taken time to truly feel. Javert felt something stir inside him, then: something that might have been described as hope but the tired man dismissed as nothing. Nonsense, no one touch of some child's hand would bring me to penance with myself, he scoffed with half a mind. No simple kindness shown to me.

"Monsieur, I think you were quite drunk during the night," her quiet voice continued, and Javert shifted in her lap, with difficulty. It took all the strength he had. "You seemed to be struggling with a dream. A nightmare, I should say…you were muttering about a boy, and a man named Thenardier…a boy named Grantaire, and my own father. A girl from my youth named Eponine…" The girl, who Javert now recognized as Valjean's adopted daughter, trailed off in thought. Her hair was dark and loosely curled, her lips full---Javert recognized classic beauty, but it did nothing to his heart. He was busy trying to stow away the flutter of hope at her musing---had, in fact, it all been just a dream? Had his mind just put into dreams his troubles, had he even made it to the Seine in the first place? Was this his second chance, did he deserve one after forfeiting Valjean one, after forfeiting him a human name?

She must have recognized the shadow of hope in his eyes, for hers, a clear blue-grey, darkened with pity. Javert turned his face away. He'd had enough of the wretched emotion. That, and a lovely throbbing headache and a taste in his mouth like an animal had died in his throat. Apparently he'd be dying in ecstasy. "I'm sorry…monsieur, but your injuries are ailing you, and your eyes…your skin is burning up…I'm just not sure if I…"

"Should bother saving the jacket?" Javert murmured amusedly, surveying once his eyes came in focus that he had indeed soiled her topcoat with drink. That's nice, he thought. Even my body can't stand pity. "I think it adds a certain je ne sais quoi…"

Cosette laughed, once, a laugh that did not meet her eyes. Javert sighed, fighting off the edges of the drink and the blackness struggling to enclose him in an entanglement of nothing.

"I knew who you were, Inspector, the moment I heard you speak," she began.

"Why am I here, then, Cosette, if you know me so well?" he murmured, cutting her off, weary. "Are you here with a right hook for my undamaged cheekbone? It could use a little putting off."

Her troubled eyes glanced over to the garden wall; there was a door buried in the climbing ivy and hidden behind the rose trellis, a thatched wooden one with a circular window. It opened quietly and a man came out to stand by his daughter's side, making hardly any sound, as if he knew he was disturbing something known only to God and the angels.

Valjean placed a hand on the girl's shoulder. His face was mixed in emotions; his eyes held something not even Inspector Javert could ascertain.

Javert struggled to sit up: Cosette held him down. He stopped moving, casually, before she could realize this. He looked up again at the sky, at the stars hidden away behind their blanket of day where they were free to rest after their vigil. He looked again at the roses, at the bloom of Cosette's face and the way the ivy climbed veinlike across the grey-blue stone---and he felt nothing. At the last spot his eyes had yet to rest, though, his gaze faltered---no. He would not give in to shame now, nor to anything else, he thought stubbornly, looking away from Valjean's face. He already knew it would hold an expression of forgiveness, or of friendship, or some other saintly emotion he had no right to feel. That is not the way the Law works. He retreated into his own mind, closing his eyes. You must give to receive, and I have given nothing.

_Don't give up, you mongrel Inspector, _a voice cheered him, amused and young. _Give 'em your best now, then, show 'em what it means. _

"Valjean…" he muttered, one corner of his mouth twisting wryly as he finally looked up and looked the convict in the eye, as a man deserved to be. "You may think I haven't, but I've learned my lesson. I know this is God's little plan for me, and I'm sorry, I am deeply ashamed of what I put you through. I understand it all now: the robbery from Gavroche, the beating from Thenardier, the drinking with Grantaire, and the chase with you…it's just a game, isn't it, a snapshot of the game you played trying to escape me. I'm sorry I put you through twenty years of this Hell, I should have given you a second chance like I've gotten from you only in one day…I wish I'd lived one day more in order to tell you everything…" His voice was fading, and he cursed his own physical weakness. Valjean looked at the sky sharply, then back at Javert, who gave him an ironic smile.

"Don't be looking up there for me, 24601…you'll have to sneak me a couple loaves of bread through the ground every so often instead of waiting for me to see the light and be on with the hosannas. I know what my soul says, if I have one." Javert's mouth was dry: he grasped, weakly, at his throat, trying to loosen the collar that was always so neatly buttoned. Valjean's brow knitted as Cosette dripped water through his cracked lips.

"You're going to be fine, Javert," he said gently, but both Valjean and Javert knew he wasn't talking about on the cold stone bench.

Javert struggled to keep going, determined to get it all out before the last light before his eyes was taken. "As I was saying, 24601, how rude of you to interrupt a dying man…it'd take me years to truly understand, but I know now what you faced. I know now that you are a man of great honour and integrity, you've raised this girl and a house of your own, and I could have never given it to you…it'll take me more than twenty years in Hell to pay off my penance, but, by God, so be it." He bowed his head, contrite. There, was that good enough? he thought, sulkily, uncannily like a child. Valjean smiled and sat next to him on the bench, taking Javert's hand. It was growing so cold, Javert thought, so cold his teeth were chattering though the breeze by his face was summer-warm. Cosette's brow knitted, and she raised a half-questioning hand to his face, but Valjean stopped her, gently.

"No, Inspector…you had jumped off a bridge, unwanted and alone, into the cold waters of the Seine that were the only embrace you ever felt. The only lesson you learned, I hope, is that people can indeed be loved and cared for, if you let them." Valjean smiled: it was a bittersweet moment for Javert. Half his mind wanted to struggle with horror, put up a fight, struggle back to the surface and wheeze in greedy gasps of air to show he still had a claim on the world. The other half, the new half, sat back and waited for the darkness.

"What a strange little man you are," Javert murmured with the last of his voice, never getting to voice his last opinion. _Quel petit monde étrange c'est._ What a strange little world this is.

As he faded, Valjean looked up and almost met Fantine's eyes, and she smiled, but his eyes looked so sad, so lost and forlorn.


	6. Fantine

**Authour's Note: Well, that was fun!!! What a cheery ending!! *beam* It was sad to write, though…but anyway. Is there a limit to how many stories you can write on Javert? There should be...it'd be safer that way. **

**Javert: Well, there's the space in between a charming habit for writing fanfiction and maniacal obsession.**

**Lawr: DARE NOT SPEAK TO ME OF OBSESSION…AND THE PRICE I HAD TO PAY… NOW I'M IN A LES MIS DEPRESSION…OH NO NOW WHAT WILL I SAY **hums Les Mis songs slightly-out-of-tune****

**Thank you for your wonderful reviews, 'specially Tears at the Edge of La Seine, for sticking with my story and not curling up in pain at it! Yaay! See ya'll if I ever write a sequel to this monst-------**

**Joly (so picked because he is awesome): Wait! you forgot the Unnecessary but Slightly Interesting Plot Holes and Loose Ends That Need tying up! *face of shock***

…**oh…oh yeah. I lied! There's one more chapter left. Look, you might be able to see it if you move very slowly!**

**(if you can call it a chapter.... Also, don't read unless the previous ending was sucky or cliché for you. It's just to switch things up…C: THAT'S A DISCLAIMER Y'ALL. if you don't like this opportune cliffhanger for me to conveniently have sequel material, just eat this note after you read it. ) **

_**Fantine**_

_Epilogue_

Fantine looked at him then as they dragged him in, the sad, bedraggled man, worse off than when he had originally died. But hopefully better in the soul, she thought, then coughed a laugh of scorn into her handkerchief. Javert would not learn, she knew: for the moment, he'd been caught up in the emotions, tied into a story the way the cold, distant Inspector had never been before. There was no way to tell whether or not he was a changed man. It'd taken twenty years to change Valjean; it would take twenty lives to change Javert. Fantine smiled as they approached her, still in her white nightgown and reminiscent of an angel, but she knew better. One could get into heaven and still have inner demons.

She pitied him as she watched him, dropped on the cold grey stones of Purgatory and left for living. In her hands, she let the chain of the locket slide through her fingers: it slipped through effortlessly, like water through cupped palms. The one luxury Javert had allowed himself. He'd thought he'd lost it: little did he know it was never his. Javert on puppet-strings, he was now; it was up to her whether his penance be paid or his shame be rewarded.

_Take my hand, _she thought. _Take my hand while you can, while you have only one moment to rest. _


End file.
